Logic Audio Coming to Mac OS X

Hardware drivers, software update due in September
By Dave Nagel

Emagic says it will be bringing its audio software and hardware products to Mac OS X. The company, which already develops for the Mac platform, showed off a beta version of Logic Audio 5 for OS X at Macworld, as well as drivers for a number of its hardware products, including Unitor8 MkII, AMT8 and MT4 MIDI interfaces and the EMI 2|6 audio interface.

By chaining up to eight Unitor8 MkII and AMT8, up to 64 separate MIDI inputs and outputs or 1024 MIDI channels are supported. In addition, the USB 24-bit capable EMI 2|6 has 2 analog inputs and 6 analog outputs, as well as one S/PDIF digital input and one output.

Emagic, as you might recall, was the only audio developer that publicly recognized and addressed issues relating to USB implementation on the Mac and problems with USB MIDI interfaces. Mac OS X drivers for Emagic's hardware are supposed to be available in September.

In a prepared statement, Gerhard Lengeling, Emagic founder and Chief Developer, had this to say:

"From the very beginning, it was important for us to support Apple's new driver concept for MIDI and audio hardware because it's the best way to use recording programs with Mac OS X. Our new music production suite will support many of Mac OS X’s new features, such as memory protection for increased system reliability, the new graphics engine with transparency and flicker-free performance, real-time window sliding and improved memory management."

Logic Audio combines digital audio recording and editing, digital signal processing, MIDI sequencing and music notation for music and audio production and post-production.

Logic Audio for Mac OS 9 and for Mac OS X are being developed concurrently and will both be available in September 2001.